Soccer, Heading For Trouble?

Youth Soccer League Bans Heading Because Of Concussion Risk

September 11, 2012|By William Weir, wweir@courant.com, The Hartford Courant

It doesn't take much for Shannon Perry, to convince the children he coaches not to head the ball.

"It's just not an instinctive thing to have something hit your head," said Perry, director of Soccer Shots Connecticut.

Sometimes it's good to follow your instincts. Heading the ball, a common soccer move where a player hits the ball with the head to direct it, is an integral part of the game. But increasing concerns about head injuries among children in sports prompted Soccer Shots, a national program for children 2 to 8, to ban heading in all games.

"There was a time when we taught them about heading," said Jason Webb, co-founder of Soccer Shots. "But we've become aware of the dangers."

Concerns about concussions, a mild traumatic brain injury, in youth sports have intensified in the last few years. Emergency departments report treating about 175,000 sports-related TBIs in children and adolescents each year. Sports-related brain injuries have increased by 60 percent in the last 10 years, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

This trend prompted the Connecticut legislature to pass a law in 2010 setting stepsto follow when a student athlete suffers a possible concussion. Coaches must pull athletes from games if they show any signs of a concussion. Athletes who have suffered a head injury aren't allowed to play again for at least 24 hours and must get clearance from a medical professional before returning.

Girls' soccer programs have the second highest number of concussions, Webb said. In high school sports, football has the highest number of brain injuries, with about 55,000 per year. Girls' soccer is second-highest, with about 29,000, according to the CDC.

"We just think that children this young don't need to be heading soccer balls," he said. "We don't want to be a bystander, so we made a decision to remove heading altogether."

The move by Soccer Shots, however, is unusual. Most leagues in Connecticut – recreation, travel and high school – have no such restrictions in place.

The Connecticut Junior Soccer Association, the umbrella group that oversees recreational soccer in the state,has not banned heading, but director of coaching Shaun Bailey said the organization recommends that coaches not teach heading to children under 10 years old.

"I think it's important that coaches woking in certain age groups should understand what they should be teaching and what they shoudn't be teaching," he said. Since kids that age rarely kick the ball in the air anyway, he said, heading isn't a big part of the game at that level.

The exact risks of heading are still unknown, but researchers are getting some clues. Last year, Dr. Michael L. Lipton, medical director of MRI services at Montefiore Medical Center in New York, published a study that looked at the effects of heading on the brains of 32 amateur soccer players, with an average age of 31, who were active in the game since they were children. The study found that among those who headed the ball most frequently, were brain abnormalities similar to those in the brains of people who have had diagnosed concussions.

"That's reason for concern," Lipton said. "I think the biggest message of this is that there is the potential for a huge problem, but we don't know today to what extent that is. The only way to solve that is to do more research."

But the study also notes that the risks appear to begin after players head the ball somewhere between 1,000 to 1,500 times per year.

"The silver lining is that we did not find that heading is universally bad. A modest amount of heading is safe for most people," he said. "All the people that we looked at are functioning individuals out there in the world doing what they've always done, " he said. "The question is whether they are doing as well as they would have been had they not been exposed to headings."

But don't expect heading to going away anytime soon. One third of the goals scored in this year's Euro Cup tournament were off of a player's head, the most in the history of the tournament.

And it will remain a part of the scholastic game as well, said Fred Balsalmo, executive director of the Connecticut Association of Athletic Directors, which oversees athletic programs in member schools of the Connecticut Interscholastic Athletic Conference.

Balsalmo can understand prohibiting young children from heading. Although the ball is smaller in youth soccer, its density is the same and the neck muscles of young children aren't fully developed. By high school, he said, students' necks and heads have developed to better withstand the impact of the ball. And, most importantly, they've been trained in the proper way to head the ball.

"Part of it is physical development and part of it is technique," he said. "A layperson might think you just hit it with your head, but there are certain parts of the head where you don't want to hit the ball and there are certain parts that you do."

As far as the danger of hitting the ball with the head, Balsamo said he suspects that more concussions happen when players try to head the ball, but miss and hit the head of another player.

"It's part of the sport," he said. "It's not something that's going to get banned in high school."